


the beast you've made of me

by novel_concept26



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/F, Immortal Curse, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 11:34:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30021174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novel_concept26/pseuds/novel_concept26
Summary: Dani Clayton has spent half an ageless century carrying the splintered soul of an ancient vampire.Half an ageless century waking, walking, drinking, forgotten by every mortal she meets--until a pub chosen by chance, and a woman who insists on remembering.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 19
Kudos: 237





	1. the longest story

It’s the quiet she likes best, she thinks. The quiet, the dark, the simplicity. No one asks anything of her anymore. No one makes demands. She belongs to no one at all these days, for the first time since she can remember.

Except the Lady. She’ll always belong to her. 

But there’s a give to these things as well as a take, and Dani Clayton sometimes thinks it’s worth it. Worth it, not to have to sit at dinner parties and elegant balls. Worth it, not to have to titter and engage in small talk. Worth it, not to have to wear the ring.

Worth it, to leave him behind. 

And if it’s all shadow, all lonely, all deep-rooted ache she can never seem to soothe, that’s fine enough. She belongs to no one. No one except the Lady, and the Lady asks so little of her. Only to carry the curse--the disease--the hunger. Only to feed the shade coiled around the remnants of her old self. Only to wake. To walk. To drink. 

It’s dramatic, she thinks, but a little theater never hurt anyone. She makes sure of that much. It’s sustainable, so long as she keeps walking, walking, walking in the quiet. The dark. The simplicity.

It’s sustainable, until she reaches the village.

***

The pub is nearly empty. Too late, or too cold, or too poor an economic situation for carousing to be the game--Dani doesn’t much care which is the real reason. She likes the emptiness of the tables, chairs pushed patiently into place, every surface as clean as it is old. She likes the warm lighting, the oak bar, the smooth wooden floorboards under her boots. 

The mirror, she does not care for, turning her head swiftly away so as not to see the void where a young woman ought to stand. This part, she has never grown used to. This part, even after carrying the Lady--the Lady’s _curse_ , more like, to hunger and need and wallow in lonely anger--for decades. She barely remembers, now, what that woman looks like. Blonde hair. Pale skin. Paler now than it had been in life, but only by so much--her mother had held such strong opinions as to what women should do with their time, and _lounging in the sun_ had never been part of the pageant. _Polite society, Danielle, has no use for a lady like_ that. 

_Like what?_ she’d always wondered, never quite daring to ask. _Adventurous? Athletic? Interesting?_

No matter. The past is long, long dead--deader even than she could imagine back then, dreaming of being someone else. Someone free. All of them are gone now: her mother, with her antiquated ideas; her mother’s friends, who peered down their noses at Dani and smiled without heart; even Edmund. Even him. 

Long dead, now. Old age, or unrepentant illness, or freak accident--she doesn’t know. She wasn't there. 

The woman she was is dead, too, Danielle Clayton buried in a grave she’d only hauled herself back out of the next night. The Lady had whispered in her ear, granted unexpected strength, unexpected fury. Danielle went in. Dani came back out again. No one ever needs to remember. 

And no one ever has. She’s been walking for--fifty years, now? More, maybe. The date on the newspaper crumpled on one table reads June 24, 1987. More than fifty years gone in a blink, and Dani is still here. Washed clean, maybe, of all the bits that had once made up a patient, kind, hopeful young teacher. But here all the same. 

She settles at the table, drawing a book from her bag. The night is still young, the hunger not yet pricking at her patience. It’s good to start smooth, start simple, to remind the Lady that the curse might have its needs, but it is _Dani_ who is still in control. Dani, who, despite making a decision unwary of its consequences so long ago, has managed to hang on this long.

Still here. Still walking. Still--

“Get you something?”

Her head snaps up, her body primed to run. An old instinct. As if anyone could touch her without consent now.

The woman watching her looks curious, but only faintly so, as if by old habit. Her hair is tied off her face with a bandana, her sleeves cuffed at the elbows. There is a loveliness about her Dani has always fostered a weakness for--a loveliness that matches, in a less primal way, that of the Lady who had come to her so long ago. _Walk with me. Walk with me, and you’ll never be alone again._

She shakes her head, smiles. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“Right,” says the woman slowly. “Only, this isn’t a library. Don’t order something, Tom’ll have me throw you out.”

She speaks like she doesn’t much care one way or another, but Dani has been around long enough to read between the lines of a person. The words are callous, but the inflection is specific--the emphasis placed not on _throw you out_ as a threat, but _Tom’ll have me._ An apology before an offense. The woman glances toward the window, aware of the wind battering the glass, her expression calmly letting Dani know _I’d rather not have to._

“I’ll have whatever’s your favorite,” Dani says. Eyebrows raise, the woman’s head tilting. 

“Mine?”

“Sure.” Dani smiles, reaches across, touches the woman’s hand lightly where it rests on the table. It’s easier, influencing human minds through touch. She doesn’t like doing it at all, if she can help it--there’s a film over the idea, a nasty oily sense of _wrong_ \--but sometimes it can’t be helped. People who look at her the way this woman is looking tend to become a problem.

People who smile at her the way this woman is beginning to smile, lips quirking up at the corners like she doesn’t quite mean to, tend to become a danger to themselves and others. 

Mostly themselves.

The woman disappears briefly behind the bar; Dani, aware of the mirror, doesn’t watch her go. Her eyes remain on her book, her fingers tracing mindless sigils into the table until a glass is set gently down before her. A thin amber ale of some kind--Dani feels no curiosity, no interest at all. She smiles. 

“Thank you.”

“Sure,” the woman says. Hesitates, as though wanting to say more. Shakes her head. The fog--the sense of _forget_ Dani brings in her wake--is already sinking its claws into this woman, already wiping Dani away. Good. It’s best when they don’t see her, don’t take an interest, don’t remember when she’s gone.

Especially women who smile like this one. 

She leaves the drink untouched, putting away two chapters in easy silence. Money, she drops on the table. No one looks up as she strides back out into the dark. 

Tonight’s meal will be found elsewhere.

***

The story should end here, she knows--a person like Dani is only still here because she’s long-since learned the art of _keep moving_. The Lady commands it. The Lady is impatient to walk. 

The hunger, pushing in along her ribs, pulsing under her wrists, is impatient for more. 

She ought to leave the little village be. There’s not much here to begin with, and it’s dangerous to feed in places where one single thread can be followed to each house in turn. Dani’s careful not to hurt where she doesn’t have to, not to kill _ever_ \--a little time, a little tender care, is all it takes to prevent it. She hasn’t left a body behind in over forty years. There’s really no excuse for making a kill where one could simply leave a vacant few minutes of memory, she thinks. 

Not that humans recognize the kindness for what it is. Not that she can blame them for their fear. She knows fear, too--waiting, always, for the Lady to become Beast, for her to rise up over Dani’s good sense and turn her into something hateful. Dying, for Dani, hadn’t been the hard part. The idea of becoming something she isn’t...

But it’s been years and years, and she is still here. Still Dani. Lonely, and quiet, and living the simplest life she can manage, given the circumstances.

And back at this same pub again.

 _Shouldn’t_ , she thinks--knows, though she’s pushing the door open and striding back to that same table again. Out comes the book. Her eyes remain resolutely clear of the bar, of the mirror, of any patrons who might give her trouble. 

“Back again?”

The woman, this time in a t-shirt, her curls loose around her face. Same woman. Same smile. Same problem. 

Dani really knows better. 

“Noticed you didn’t touch the ale,” the woman points out, leaning her hip against the table. There’s a quiet confidence to the way she holds herself, a constrained line of motion that says she’s in no hurry. Dani watches her, smiling a little, and thinks, _Shouldn’t be here._

“No, I,” she begins to reply. Her smile fades to a frown. “Wait. Noticed.”

“Yeah,” the woman says. “And you overpaid. Drinks much pricier in America, then?”

Dani wouldn’t know. Dani hasn’t set foot in America since the sixties. 

“I guess,” she says, still puzzled. This woman shouldn’t be speaking of last night as though it was--well. Only last night. This woman shouldn’t _remember_ Dani at all. The Lady’s influence generally makes certain of that. 

All these years, it’s never failed her. 

That is the idea.

“Something darker tonight, maybe?” the woman goes on, watching Dani with shrewd eyes. “A stout?”

“Okay,” Dani agrees, knowing full well she won’t touch it when the drink comes, and finding herself quite unable to say no. Quite unable to do what she should, which is to slip out before the woman can return to this table and smile at her again.

 _Try harder_ , she tells herself, when the glass is standing proudly beside her book, laid face-down on the table. _Try harder to do it._ Because, the thing is, if this woman remembers her--if this woman _keeps_ remembering her--she’s bound to find herself on the other side of a beheading. A torch. A particularly sharp slat of wood. 

Her hand brushes the woman’s again, her fingers tingling. The skin is soft, the nails short; when she turns the woman’s hand over in her own, she finds callouses on the pads of her fingers. 

“Bold,” the woman says, amused--but there’s a flare of something more in her eyes, matching her smile too well. Dani swallows. Presses forward with her own mind, gently caressing the woman’s intentions. _Forget me_ , she wills. _I was never here._

“Enjoy,” the woman says, the clear focus in her eyes drifting to hazy confusion. 

Dani watches her go, her chest tight with an unfamiliar sensation--something _like_ hunger, and yet...

No one, she thinks, has ever remembered her when she’d wanted them to forget. No one since the Lady’s curse. Even Edmund, who had dreamed of a big wedding, a big house, a big family since they were children, had forgotten her, in the end. Easily. She’d willed it, and walked away, and he had forgotten she’d ever climbed out of that grave. 

This woman, whose name is not Dani’s to know, whose life is not Dani’s to touch, remembered. 

Even as she’s leaving, even as she’s slipping out into the dark to find someone to dull the Lady’s hunger, Dani knows she’ll be back again. A terrible idea. A terrible test of the universe’s machinations. And yet.

She can’t erase the curiosity, bent behind a shop with a young woman’s wrist pulsing warm against her lips. She can’t erase the way the woman had smiled at her with knowing amusement, as her teeth sharpen and the Lady takes what she needs. She can’t _forget_ , as copper runs sweet across her tongue, and the girl sitting on the pavement heaves a languid sigh beneath her. 

It’s an awful idea. Truly, the worst. 

She has to know.

***

“Starting to think you don’t actually drink.”

The woman actually sits this time, sprawling into the chair across from Dani as though belonging there all along. Dani bites down on a smile.

“Why else would I come to a place like this?”

“The company?” the woman suggests, and though her tone is idle, her smile scorches. Dani shakes her head, laughing. 

She can’t remember the last time she laughed. 

“I’m not supposed to be here,” she confides. The woman raises her eyebrows. 

“Where are you supposed to be?”

 _Alone_ , Dani thinks. _Forgotten_ , Dani thinks. _That was the deal_ , Dani thinks, the price of a young woman’s freedom. Wake. Walk. Feed. There has never needed to be anything else. 

“Not here,” she settles on saying--a truth without teeth. The woman nods slowly, leaning across the table, her hand sliding over pocked wood to brush Dani’s wrist. 

“Doesn’t seem to be stopping you. Twice is an accident. Three is habit.”

She isn’t wrong. Two people in this village bear Dani’s mark now, the inner slope of their wrists stained with new scars they won’t be able to explain. She’ll have to drink from a third tonight, and the odds of getting out unscathed--even with the fog clearing her from their minds the minute she walks away--shrink yet again. This isn’t a good idea. 

But this woman, impossibly, illogically, remembers her. Forgot, maybe, briefly--in the time it took Dani to pay and leave--and then the memory just...sprang back into place. Dani has made mistakes with women before, has let their smiles grace her heart in ways she was never meant to allow, but it’s never resulted in _this._

“Jamie,” the woman says, and Dani almost recoils--almost says, _Don’t tell me that, don’t put that on me, you’re not supposed to remember--but I won’t be able to forget._

“Dani,” she says instead, and feels the Lady pulse deep in the place she’s always imagined her soul to rest. The Lady, a curse--a gift--a structure around which she’s built her second chance at life. The Lady, who looks upon Jamie now and sends a powerful swell of hunger up through Dani’s bones. 

_Take her. Take her. She wants it,_ look _at her._

Jamie does, Dani senses, want something. Something that has no need for Dani’s influence, no requirement for Dani pulling the strings. Jamie wants something from her--something honest, something human--and the very idea of it spikes fresh terror like she hasn’t felt in decades.

“This is a bad idea,” she says in a low voice. “It’s dangerous.”

Jamie, fingers tracing Dani’s palm, searching out her lifeline, shrugs. “Always is. Doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it.”

***

There’s a place upstairs, a little flat. Jamie leads the way as though she’s done this a hundred times, taking Dani’s hand with an almost nonchalant gesture. 

“If you let me in,” Dani says, “this gets so much more complicated.”

“I’ll take the chance,” Jamie says. She should be laughing as she says it, a flirtatious bit of banter designed to delight, but she isn’t. She’s looking at Dani, her free hand turning the key, like she already understands. 

“I’m not,” Dani says. Stops. Sighs. “I’m not what you’re--what you think I--”

“Start here,” Jamie says, and pushes open the door. An invitation without words, one Dani can’t resist leaning into. She hasn’t let herself accept an invitation like this in so long. 

_Take her_ , the Lady breathes. _Take her, bring her to me._ Dani squeezes her hands into fists, the familiar rage of hunger grinding against this new, too-human variant. Jamie is closing the door, kicking off her shoes, smiling. 

The smile is what really breaks her. The smile, which is a little teasing, a little tempting, but mostly just _real._

She’s kissing Jamie before she can stop herself, and even as she’s doing it, there is something too warm about it. Something too _good_ about the way Jamie catches her, hands digging into Dani’s hair, lips parting when Dani brushes against her with the tip of her tongue. For all the skin she’s tasted, all the times she’s kissed and licked and bitten, this is different. This is--

This has no _path_. No road to follow to the end. No lie baked into the heart of it. Every woman she’s ever led into the dark, every time she’s ever drank deep and pulled back before the Lady can win back control, seems to fall away in comparison to how desperately she’s kissing Jamie. This person she barely knows. This woman who slips a hand around her hip like an anchor. This woman whose kiss is confident, who is _smiling_ into her, who leans back breathlessly and says, “You’re sure about this?”

“Don’t ask me that,” Dani breathes, kissing her again. Jamie makes a soft groaning sound, tilting her head away. 

“Why not?”

“Because,” Dani says, unable to stop herself from kissing around every word, “I shouldn’t be here.”

“Shouldn’t, or don’t want to be?” Jamie is backing her against the wall, and Dani can hear her heartbeat, can’t seem to erase the dizzy scent of life pouring off of her in waves. Blood, yes, thrumming beneath her skin, but also breath, and desire, and something giddy and nameless that can only be _joy._

Such a human thing, joy. Why, then, does Dani feel it pressing in on her, too?

“Hey.” Jamie has stopped kissing her, is simply holding her face gently between her hands. Her thumbs have found Dani’s cheekbones, are pressing so lightly, Dani closes her eyes to keep from crumbling. 

“Hey.”

“If you really don’t feel good about this, we don’t have to. We can, I dunno. Talk. Or not. Whatever you want.”

Dani breathes slowly, all the little measures of _human_ in a body that is _not_. She likes breathing, she’s found. Likes willing her heart to beat. Likes feeling warm, likes feeling as though any sunrise _might_ be welcome, someday. Someday, when all of this fades. 

Like it ever can. Like the Lady would ever allow it. That wasn’t the deal.

“There are things,” she says hollowly, “you don’t know.”

“All the things,” Jamie agrees comfortably. “Everything except your name and what you _don’t_ like to drink.”

Despite herself, Dani laughs again. She leans forward until her forehead presses Jamie’s, until Jamie’s breath coasting lightly across her lips is the only thing she can feel. 

The only thing outside of the beating, raging, desperate hunger.

“You wouldn’t believe me,” she says. “I--sometimes even I think I’m crazy.” And, really, might she be? Might this all be some delusion, some shattering of sense that has led her to believe there will be no woman waiting for her in the mirror? Or, worse, a delusion leading her to believe she _is_ here--that she _is_ still Dani, despite it all?

“Tell me anyway,” Jamie says, and Dani kisses her again. Kisses the edges of her lips, the curve of her jaw, the length of her neck. Kisses the place where the pulse beats like fists against a casket lid, her lips parting, her tongue flat against the salt of Jamie’s skin. She hears Jamie draw a sharp breath, one hand tight in her hair, hears Jamie say, “ _Yes_ ” in a tone Dani has to fight to deny.

She doesn’t mean it. She can’t mean it. She doesn’t _know_. 

And Dani, though the Lady roars with that unrelenting need, can’t take. Not like this. Not here. This woman _remembers_ her. This woman will _remember_ tomorrow, even if Dani slips out of her bed, even if Dani never shows her face again. She’ll remember. It will, somehow, unfairly, haunt the rest of her life. 

“It’s a long story,” she says, face still buried in Jamie’s neck. Her hips are twitching against Jamie’s thigh, her hands sliding under Jamie’s shirt. “A long, crazy story.”

“I have time,” Jamie says. Dani lifts her head. Smiles. 

It’s not supposed to be like this. It’s meant to be quiet. Dark. Simple.

Lonely. 

That was the deal.

“The teacher,” she says quietly, closing her eyes as she scrounges for the beginning for the first time in over fifty years, “was, by choice, a solitary young woman...”

Jamie listens.


	2. consequence of myth and legend

_The teacher was, by choice, a solitary young woman--_

Jamie hasn’t said a word in nearly an hour. Has barely moved, even. The story, which began in a tangle of limbs, Dani only able to bring herself to the words _because_ of this woman’s hands gripping her hips, was best told with distance, in the end. Had to be. There was simply no way Dani could get the bulk of it out with the distraction of Jamie’s pulse under her lips, no matter how tempting.

Really, _because_ of how tempting.

So, they’d made their way to the battered sofa, the leather peeling back to reveal stuffing. Dani had carefully kept her distance, if only to keep from punctuating the worst moments with hands that so badly wanted to forget the tale altogether.

_Give her to me. She wants you to._

She winced, ignoring the voice which is not a voice, the hunger which will never ease. It has not slipped her notice, how foolish she’s been, coming up before taking the edge off. The worst idea atop a whole heap of bad, but she hadn’t _expected_ this. Hadn’t expected Jamie to remember her again--or to extend the invitation.

Hadn’t expected herself to be so weak as to accept.

And now, here they are an hour later: Dani, picking restlessly at the brown leather beneath her folded legs, Jamie unmoving.

 _Because she thinks you’re insane_ , Dani thinks. _Because she wants you to leave._ And she _should_ leave. Should hope like hell third time really is the charm, that the fog the Lady supplies will wipe her clean from Jamie’s mind by the time she wakes tomorrow morning. It would only be right.

It would only be _kind_ , especially now. Especially now that Jamie--

“You’ve been alone for fifty years?”

Dani blinks. “I--yes?” _Sort of, anyway._

Jamie looks...not angry, not horrified, not even like she thinks Dani just wasted the last hour of her life weaving a wild lie. Jamie looks...bothered.

“Completely? No company at all. For half a century.”

This isn’t right. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. Jamie should, at absolute _best_ , be shoving her toward the exit with a hastily-drawn excuse about getting to bed early for a busy day. Jamie should, at absolute worst, be running screaming in the opposite direction.

Jamie is neither running, nor screaming. Jamie is looking at her with a furrowed brow, as though the one part of the story--the one takeaway after curse and blood, death and endless motion--she’s stuck on is...

“Sounds lonely.”

“I...guess so.” This is easily the most baffling part of a night that has not for a single moment gone to plan. _I just told you...all of it. Every word, not a syllable a lie. Viola. The pact. The souls. The--_

Jamie should be scrambling for a weapon.

Jamie should be kicking her out.

“How?” Jamie asks. She’s scratching the back of her head, looking genuinely puzzled.

“How...what?” _How did I not see what the Lady was offering? How did I let myself accept the gift without thinking of the consequence? How have I just kept running this long without letting myself sink?_

“How’ve you managed that long without a friend?” Jamie asks, and something in Dani threatens to cave in. “I mean, don’t get me wrong--some days, that sounds just shy of fuckin’ ideal. But...that’s a long goddamn time, Dani.”

“You...believe me?” _You’re not afraid_ , she wants to add, and finds herself not quite able. As if shining a light on Jamie’s courage will remind her of the shadows waiting for her should she turn her head. “You don’t think I’m out of my mind?”

Jamie isn’t quite smiling, she finds--though there’s a warmth to her expression, to the way her eyebrows rise and her mouth quirks. She isn’t quite smiling, even as she tilts her body toward Dani and says, “Been around a lot of liars. You don’t seem the type.”

“That seems like it would make me the best kind of liar,” Dani points out. Her fingers are itching, every sense on alert; Jamie is still sitting at a careful distance, her legs splayed, leaning back on her elbow against the arm of the sofa. Jamie, for all the listening she’s done tonight, is giving no sign that she’s willing to be touched again.

For the best, really. It was hard enough stopping the first time. Now, with the hunger pushing up under her skin and her head racing with the absurdity of the evening, there’s no telling what will happen if she finds herself leaning in again.

“I do have a question, though,” Jamie says.

Dani smiles faintly. “Just the one?”

“One at at time. Why you?”

Dani closes her eyes. The question occurs to her often, though she’d rather not think on it. It isn’t something she can bear to remember often: how silly she’d been, ignorant to the ways of the world beneath the world.

_Because I was a fool. Because I was easy prey. Because I was--_

_Danielle Clayton, looking down. Danielle Clayton, on her knees before the lake, thinking,_ I could swim. I could swim as far out as my body would allow, and then I could float until someone--anyone--picks me up and takes me away from this.

 _Danielle Clayton, looking at the ring on her finger and feeling no pride. Only the steady thrum of self-loathing. Only the steadier pound of fear._ You’ll make such a lovely wife, dear _, Judy O’Mara had said only last week._ The most beautiful wife, and the most elegant mother.

 _Danielle Clayton, gazing into the water, thinking,_ I could swim, and I could run, and I could go somewhere--anywhere--to keep from being his.

“I guess because…she wanted the same thing I did. She wanted freedom. Best way to get that was to find someone willing to share their soul with her. Someone like…”

 _Danielle Clayton, laying her hands against the water, trying to make sense of the moonlit image before her. A face she recognizes too well--pale and serious, framed with blonde hair stained blue in the night’s water, eyes that seem always to be crying out--gazes back...but, beneath the downturned curve of her lips, the familiar arc of her nose, the gold of her earrings, something else waits. Some_ one _else, gazing back at her._

_A face, which is not a face, which perhaps was a face once and now is only memory, gazing back._

Seems an awful waste _, a voice, which is not a voice, which certainly must have belonged to someone once upon a time, is purring._ Why swim when you can fly?

“Freedom from marriage,” Jamie says. There is no judgment in her voice, only a small divot between her brows that says she understands this much, at least.

“From all of it,” Dani answers. This part, she can never take back. This part, she can never quite muster remorse for. “There were…rules, back then, for what a woman could be. Should be.”

“Still are,” Jamie muses, and while Dani knows that’s true--knows that will always _be_ true, on some deeply injust level--it’s different. More different than Jamie could know.

She’s quiet for a moment, gazing down her at her hands. When Jamie shifts, she glances up, fully expecting to see her standing-- _Well, guess it’s that time, best be shoving off now_.

Instead, she finds Jamie looking at her intently. “Do you regret it?”

“Yes,” Dani says without hesitation. And then: “And still, I don’t know that I’d do it differently, even if I could.” There had simply been so much _worth_ to the decision. So much _value_ to being allowed for the first time in her life to walk away from everything. The consequences are still seeping in from every direction, the war for her soul eternally waged--but would she give it up, go back to a brief life as Edmund O’Mara’s wife, knowing how badly that kind of existence would have burned?

 _Danielle Clayton, staring frozen with bewilderment into the lake. Danielle Clayton, who should be lurching backward, should be shuffling away, should be getting_ home _, Eddie will be missing her, they’ll all be missing her, she’ll never stop them from missing her--_

I know what you’re thinking _, the voice is whispering._ I know what they demand of you. What they’ll never stop demanding of you. But I know something else, too. I know how to make it all go away, forever.

A bolder woman would have said no. A braver woman would be able to regret it now. A better soul, a _stronger_ soul, would have turned away and gone back to her world, which did not fit quite right, which did not evoke all the color of her dreams, but was hers to inherit all the same. She should have.

But then she wouldn’t be here, on Jamie’s sofa, watching Jamie’s intent expression. She wouldn’t ever have existed near this strange, unexplainable woman at all.

Would she give it up? Give _this_ up? Abandon the travel, the adventure, the quiet, this woman’s attention for this one inexplicable night?

No. Not for anything.

 _Danielle Clayton, pressing a hand to the water, feeling at once terrified and elated at the idea._ Forever? I don’t know if I want--

Women like us only have so many choices, _the voice is murmuring._ A woman like us is so easily boxed up and thrown away. Say yes. Say yes, and we will both be free to do as we wish.

 _Danielle Clayton, remembering every fairytale, every ghost story, thinking,_ This is how the devil gets his due. _Danielle Clayton, remembering, and finding in her heart not fear after all--not fear, but_ need _. A need not to be this. A need not to be here. A need not to be trapped. If she can’t tell Edmund as much...if she can’t..._

“I still don’t...what was she doing in the lake?”

 _Why do you_ believe _me?_ “Family,” Dani says simply. “Her family, finding her nature--her _disease_ , they believed, when she wasted but would not die--brought her to the lake. Threw her in. They thought it would be enough to save her soul.”

“But it wasn’t,” Jamie finishes. Dani smiles, a bare crook of lips she knows does not reach her eyes.

“Not nearly.”

_Danielle Clayton, stepping back as the Lady rises from the water. Danielle Clayton, who will come to learn the realities of myth and legend, who will come to carry all the memories of this creature--once a woman, now something held in an awful purgatory crafted by the hands of love._ _The image in the lake had been a horror, smooth-featured and miserable._

_This woman, drawing ever nearer, seems to reshape before her eyes. Cheekbones sharp enough to cut. Lips red and full. Hair, tumbling dark over slim shoulders. This woman, taking her chin in hand, looking her over as a butcher inspects a fresh beast in its final moments._

_Blue eyes, coming into focus at last, as though plucked straight from Danielle Clayton’s own image._

Welcome me in, _the voice she will come to love and loathe and dread for the rest of her days murmurs as she bows in toward a trembling pulse._ Invite me, Danielle Clayton. 

You, _Danielle is saying, shaking almost too hard to stand upright,_ me, us. You. Me. Us.

The memory of the Lady bending over her, the memory of those teeth finding Dani’s throat, sends a shudder through her. It shouldn’t. Fifty years on, it should feel like nothing more than an empty glass she ought to clear away from the table.

Jamie’s hand brushes her own, more gentle than anything Dani has felt in too long. “Hey. You all right?”

 _No._ No, she isn’t all right. She’s just given this woman her entire life story--a story that should not make sense, a story rife with monsters and madness--and she isn’t _meant_ to do that. This life--this half-life--is silent. It is steady, and it is plodding, and it is secret above all else.

And the Lady is hungry. So very hungry.

“I should go,” she breathes. “I’ve--taken up your time.”

“My time?” Jamie repeats. “Hey, hang on--”

“I should go,” Dani repeats more forcefully, trying to convince herself of it. Trying to convince herself of the _urgency_ of it. “Before I--before I do something I regret--”

“I’m not going to,” Jamie begins. Stops. Shakes her head once, ruefully. “Dani, it’s okay. If you want to go, or if you want to stay, it’s not...I don’t mind.”

“You shouldn’t believe me,” Dani says hoarsely. “Or _remember_ me. Why do you...why...”

Jamie’s hand is soft, cradling her cheek. Dani is sure they weren’t sitting this close a moment ago, and even more sure it’s her own fault that’s changed--Jamie is still exactly as she’s been for the last hour, legs splayed recklessly open, one arm draped over the sofa with perfect ease. Jamie belongs here, for reasons beyond simply etching her name onto the lease. Jamie is normal.

Jamie is normal, and the Lady is hungry, and Dani is--

 _Always fighting_ , the Lady sighs. _Always fighting it off. Fifty years in my company, Danielle, why are you still not--_

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be magic,” Jamie says quietly. “Maybe you’ve just been alone too goddamned long.”

The world, Dani understands more than most, is too enormous to claim understanding of every inch. Even her own life, tied inexorably to the woman who rose out of that lake--a woman whose own husband and child had bound her into a trunk and hurled her into the placid waters, operating on an old myth about monsters and purification--doesn’t always make sense.

But Jamie looking at her this way makes even less sense than the obstinate grip of her memory.

Jamie looking at her with the softest smile she’s ever seen makes no sense at all.

“You don’t want me to stay,” Dani says, aware she’s leaning into the curve of Jamie’s palm. “You really don’t.”

“Why?” Jamie’s thumb traces along her cheek. “Because you’re dangerous?”

Dani closes her eyes. It’s not that she asks--it’s _how_ she asks it. _Because you’re dangerous_ , not _because_ you think _you’re dangerous._ The absence of those two little words makes all the difference.

“I try not to be,” she says. “But someday--someday, she’s going to win.” The deepest sort of truth. If grief is a sliding scale--if one can mourn the death of one’s own potential, one’s own breath-and-blood existence under the sun--Dani has come so close to completing it time and again. So close to giving in to the finality of acceptance.

And then something like _this_ turns up. A woman with a smile like freedom. A woman who believes her when all logic should point the other way.

“You say that like it’s already done.”

“It’s...” This part, she can’t explain. This part isn’t a history lesson or a memory, a stone skipped across time from _was_ to _is._ This part is simply felt, held beneath her skin like a ticking time bomb. And, still, with Jamie looking at her this way, she wants so badly to try. “I...agreed. And it’s binding.”

“Get that,” Jamie says patiently, though it’s not possible that she ever could. Dani shakes her head.

“No, you--it didn’t take right. Even when I welcomed her in, when she…it changed me, but it didn’t _complete._ I’m still...” _Still me. Sort of. Parts of me._

“Still here,” Jamie says. Like she understands. Like that’s an option.

Or, maybe: like she doesn’t need to, to know Dani believes.

It occurs to her, suddenly, that Jamie has not asked for proof of any kind.

It occurs to her, suddenly, that Jamie’s eyes are still on her own.

It occurs to her, suddenly, that Jamie is so painfully alive, it almost lulls Dani into believing she could be, too.

“I shouldn’t be,” she whispers. “I’m not supposed to be. And someday, no matter how hard I fight, she will--she’ll take what’s left."

Jamie’s hand is so soft on her cheek. Jamie’s skin is so warm, her breath brightening the room with its unapologetic push-pull. Jamie is so _painfully_ alive, so painfully _here_ , and Dani finds herself inhaling more sharply to match. Exhaling softly. Watching Jamie’s pupils dilate, her tongue unconsciously wetting her lips.

“What will you do?” Jamie asks, even as Dani is tilting unflinchingly in. “In the meantime, while you wait?”

 _What she’s been doing, certainly._ Keep moving. Always moving. It’s the quiet she likes best. The simplicity. The--

She’s kissing Jamie. She doesn’t entirely know how or why, but it’s happening all the same, as though there’s just something about Jamie--the easy way she listens, the easier way she responds, the seamless slip of her hand from Dani’s cheek to Dani’s hair--that pulls as hard as hunger.

 _Give her to me_ , the Lady whispers, and Dani--for the first time in half a century--tunes her out. For the first time in half a century, there is madness of a _good_ kind set before her. Not a plan, but a decision: _Tonight. I will give her tonight._

Not the Lady, but Jamie, who should never have believed, listened, invited, remembered.

Not the Lady, who tethered herself to Dani all wrong, who broke Dani’s lifeline without snapping her will, but Jamie, who is leaning into Dani like every word of a demented story only cemented her desire to be part of this chapter.

Jamie is leaning into her, and Dani lets herself tilt backward in a slow sprawl, lets Jamie ease all the way in until there is nothing else to focus on. The flat disappears, the lamp and table and little boxed plants vanishing as Dani closes her eyes, grips the back of Jamie’s shirt, pushes her closer.

Women have looked at her like Jamie does, more than a few times over the years. Sometimes, she’s let them in--for a moment. Sometimes, she’s even let them touch her--for the heartbeat between _meet_ and _forget._ Sometimes, the world is just too quiet, even for her.

But none of them have ever kissed her the way Jamie is kissing her. With a sweet hunger, yes, just as she had before--but also with a patience Dani doesn’t quite understand. As though Jamie sees no reason to rush. As though Jamie heard a woman tell a tale of immortal madness and decided, _Fair enough. Take the moment._

Dani can’t remember the last time she took a moment. There have simply been too many to count, spilling over into one another like snowflakes. Time means nothing when it all looks the same.

For her, time is elastic, though the Lady presses ever closer.

For Jamie, time is absolute, no one minute or hour ensured.

 _This won’t work_ , she thinks, even as Jamie is blanketing her, even as Jamie is pressing between her legs with one strong thigh until she groans. _This won’t work. She remembers, and I can’t forget, and this isn’t what she thinks it’ll be._

Why, then, can’t she stop herself from opening to Jamie’s kiss?

Why, then, can’t she stop the sound wrenching up from her chest when Jamie kisses her neck?

She’s leaning her head back, giving Jamie full access to her throat, and Jamie’s teeth are undemanding, biting down. Jamie’s teeth are gentle, finding the exact spot the newly-risen Lady had once claimed--and then moving along with care, with curiosity, a series of sweet stings raining warmth down her spine. She digs her fingers into Jamie’s hair, pushing her in, letting herself be swept along by the heat pooling under her skin.

It’s good, she thinks, to pretend. It can only _be_ pretend, she knows--can only be _this_ , the momentary flush, the temporary pleasure. She can’t give Jamie more than this--but she _can_ accept what Jamie is offering.

 _Tell her_ , she thinks, and can’t tell if it’s the Lady’s voice or her own conscience. _Tell her you can’t. Tell her you won’t be able to make it last._

Jamie, tongue stroking over a gently-placed bite, makes a sound against her skin that drives all the assertion from her bones. Jamie isn’t thinking about _can’t._ Jamie isn’t thinking about _tomorrow._ Jamie is nipping at her jaw, one hand working the sweater up her stomach. Jamie’s fingers are deft, cupping her breast, her thigh solid as Dani pushes against its curve with increasingly-frenetic desire, and when Dani grasps a handful of messy curls and pulls, Jamie meets her eyes without hesitation.

“Up to you,” she says. “If you think it’s a bad idea, we can--”

The words muffle, Dani drinking them down with a kiss fierce enough to hurt. She hears Jamie’s voice tighten, feels Jamie grind against her, accepting the decision Dani has made for the both of them: this is how it’s going to be. Not smooth and slow, not Jamie learning every inch of her hour by hour, but feeding this new hunger Dani had thought she could ward off if she just kept talking long enough.

This hunger, which Jamie feels, too, which can—unlike everything else in too long a life—be _shared._

She’s pushing up, Jamie pushing down, and for a moment, she feels almost as though this suspension between moments could last forever. She’s laughing, a giddy sound that takes them both by surprise, her head reeling when Jamie kisses her again with a grin on her own lips.

“Here, or...?”

Jamie is gesturing with a twitch of her head, and Dani realizes there is a curtain draped carefully over a rafter on the other side of the room. A bed, she supposes, will materialize if Jamie pulls that bit of cloth aside. A bed, she supposes, will make this feel so much more real.

“Don’t have to,” Jamie says--the second time tonight those words have fallen from her lips. She’s running the backs of her fingers down Dani’s temple, her cheek, her knuckles brushing lightly enough to make Dani squirm. Her thigh is still gloriously placed, doing away with Dani’s resolve with every flex of muscle, with every rock of hips.

“You don’t want me to go?”

“Does it feel like I want you to go?” She raises her eyebrows, grinning. Dani grips her by the collar, pulls her down until the sound of her heart beating drowns out the nerves in her own head.

“I don’t want to hurt--”

“Then don’t,” Jamie says, like it’s that simple. _I can’t not_ , Dani thinks, because there is a difference between not killing and not hurting, and some things--some things are beyond her control. Not killing means she’s still _her;_ she learned control over that as quickly as she could, and hasn’t slipped since. Not hurting is something else entirely. Not hurting is a promise only fools make.

Part of her is tempted to keep Jamie here on this sofa, to keep a barrier between herself and this last uncharted corner of Jamie’s territory. She can simply push Jamie back, or pull her back down, and Jamie will come willingly. Jamie will slide her skirt up, go back to kissing her neck with that unexpected tender heat, and it will be enough.

 _I want it_ , Dani thinks, pulling at the collar of Jamie’s shirt until she obediently follows Dani toward the divide. _I want it once. Once will be enough._

To pretend. To pretend that, for one single night, she can be what Jamie believes. Whether mad or monster, she can be the person Jamie sees beneath the story.

The hunger is rising--the familiar urge to take something soft and break it open--and she leans away from it into the arms of this new craving, instead. Leans away from the Lady and into Jamie, who lets herself fall amid rumpled sheets with an expression of such dizzy delight, it’s nearly heartbreaking to witness.

There is no more conversation, no more Jamie saying _don’t have to_ or Dani insisting _I shouldn’t be here._ There is only the wonderful vitality of this kind of ache, the wonderful scent of blood pumping hotter, the wonderful crash of heartbeat into heartbeat. Everything about Jamie that seemed so alive at the beginning of this night seems almost to _hum_ now, with Dani pushing her into the mattress. Everything about her that seemed lit from within _burns_ now, with Dani rucking the shirt up her ribs, fingers flicking open smooth buttons with a forced sense of calm.

 _One_ , she counts, as Jamie’s hand tightens around her waist.

 _Two_ , she counts, as Jamie’s breath drifts in a sigh.

 _Three_ , she counts, as Jamie’s heart pumps a violent tattoo.

 _Four_ , she counts, as Jamie gazes at her with eyes that are not yet pleading.

The hunger is pounding fists against its cage--useless to pretend it isn’t--but if she wants this badly enough, it can be redirected. It can be blunted, carefully twisted away from _pain_ and into _pleasure._ The desire to kiss Jamie is just as powerful, the urge to work the shirt off of her shoulders when she sits up, the need to claim another kiss, another, another. Jamie’s hands are assured, lifting the sweater over Dani’s head. Jamie’s hands are steady, pulling Dani close. Jamie’s hands only begin to shake when Dani drags down the zipper of her jeans, looking her in the eye all the while.

And, even now, Jamie is grinning. Even now, with cheeks flushed and breath hitching, there is that joy again, that so-human light that seems to come off of her in waves.

The woman in the pub hadn’t looked _joyful_. Beautiful, yes; fascinating, yes; amused, yes. But joyful? It seems such a strange word to assign the woman who had looked her over and said coolly, _This isn’t a library._

And yet, here she is, the pink in her cheeks spilling down her neck, her hair wild from Dani’s hands grasping, pulling, smoothing. Grinning like this is the most fun she’s had in years, lips parting and head casting back with a groan when Dani drags her nails along the seam of her jeans.

Joy, chosen in the dim glow of a single lamp.

Joy, chosen despite the shadows of a long story.

Joy, chosen here and now, and damn whatever comes tomorrow.

Joy is so human, so much the product of time slipping away on itself, more infectious than she’d realized. Here, with Jamie’s hands beneath her skirt--here, with Jamie looking so proud of herself when Dani inhales--here, with Jamie’s thumb skidding a hot pattern, building friction as Jamie’s fingers are teasing her open--she feels it, too. Not only the hunger, but the joy of letting someone get close.

The joy of Jamie’s kiss coasting across shoulder and collarbone, Jamie somehow taking charge from beneath her. The joy of Jamie’s voice, a sound as surprised as it is laced with desire, licking against her skin when Dani slips a hand between cotton and denim.

The joy of Jamie tight around her fingers, Jamie’s own hand stroking to match, Jamie looking at her with challenge in her eyes as the world reduces to panting breaths, to the wet slide of skin, to the precise way one person can temporarily resolve another.

 _Can’t stay_ , Dani thinks, even as she’s rolling her hips, knees braced against the bed, bending into Jamie’s ragged-groan kiss. _Can’t stay_ , she thinks, even as Jamie’s hand slides free, Jamie pulling insistently at her to _come here_ without words.

 _Can’t not_ , she thinks, as Jamie leans back against the pillows, guides her down over a questing mouth. Her palm presses flat to the wall, her free hand catching hard enough in Jamie’s hair to jerk forth a grunt--pain and pleasure mingling in the best way, even as Jamie begins to build her up again with firm strokes. Jamie, who couldn’t be more alive, seems to be having the time of her life with Dani whimpering above her.

 _This is not enough_ , the Lady insists. Dani, heart thrashing, breath winding tight, thighs shaking as Jamie’s tongue curls around her, disagrees. This is very much enough. This is maybe even _too much_ , in ways dulling the Lady’s hunger never can be, and if she could only make _this_ her forever--

 _Can’t stay--can’t not--_ revolving on a loop with Jamie’s hands on her thighs, Jamie’s mouth warm and sweetly coaxing, Jamie making that _sound_ into her like this is all she needs in the world to drown the rest of it out. Dani, who hasn’t stopped moving in decades, who hasn’t let anyone in for so long, closes her eyes, stops breathing altogether, lets the Lady fall away until all that’s left is the overwhelming sense of _here_.

She feels one of Jamie’s hands fall away from her skin, turns to look back over her shoulder in time to see those fingers pick up a rhythm between Jamie’s own legs. She shakes her head, wanting to laugh, wanting to cry out. There is simply too much pleasure in this tiny flat to be allowed. Simply too much easy instinct to be indulged, with Jamie tending to her like the act of running her tongue along Dani’s skin, soaking up the consequence of her own efforts, can banish all the realities of the dark.

It should be the kind of thought that stops the pleasure in its tracks--but she’s watching Jamie’s hand increase friction, watching Jamie’s hips rise, feeling Jamie switch from gentle licks to something sharp and steady and so insistent, she can’t hold off from it any longer. Jamie is so human, so _utterly_ alive, and right now--right now, with her fingers digging clawlike into the plaster of the wall, with her voice cresting out of her without control--Dani can believe she, too, has never been anything else. Never been the Lady’s at all. Never been anyone except the sort of woman Jamie wants so badly to invite into her bed.

Jamie’s eyes are closed, her hand working a near-brutal pace, and when Dani slides down to cover deft fingers with her own, she releases a sound like a prayer. Dani curls in toward the heat of her, the sweat of her skin as bright as the steady thud of her heart. There is so much to take in--the particular cast of her head against the pillow, the glisten of her lips as they part around a groan, the way her entire body shifts to push against Dani’s as if unwilling to sacrifice even a moment of contact. Dani, gripping her hip with one hand, curling deep with the other, buries her face against her neck and thinks, _Human. This is human. This is joyous and beautiful and there is nothing to fear here, nothing that could go wrong_ here--

She’s still thinking it, kissing Jamie’s neck. Still thinking it, dragging the blunt of her teeth over silver chain and collarbone, relishing the hiss of breath Jamie releases as damp fingers grip her hair. Still thinking it, the flat of her tongue finding Jamie’s sprinting pulse, the scent of arousal and life intoxicating as she sucks gently--less gently-- _hard_ in time with the thrust of her fingers.

 _Give her to me_ , the Lady breathes, and Dani--the human side of Dani, the joyful side of Dani, the side of Dani which is believing for the first time that she might still live--pushes against her as hard as she knows how.

The hunger, which has until this moment allowed itself to be rerouted into skin and salt and slick, pushes _back_.

Jamie’s breath hitches, the hand in Dani’s hair flexing in surprise as Dani’s teeth--her true teeth, sharp enough not even to hurt as they puncture--slip beneath her skin. She releases a low moan, her hips spiking hard against Dani’s hand, her palm an insistent pressure until Dani’s mouth is flush to her throat.

“That’s--yes--keep--” She’s shuddering, and Dani is losing track of everything at an impossible pace. Parts of this are right, and parts are terrible, and Jamie _should_ be shoving her away--there are no glamours at work just now, no influence stroking Jamie’s fears aside; whatever Jamie is feeling now, holding Dani to her, crying out, is entirely _Jamie_ \--

This is wrong, Dani understands, even as the Lady exults in her victory. This is _wrong_ \--Dani might belong to the Lady, might never belong to anything else enough to matter, but _Jamie_ did not agree to this. Jamie does not understand this, even if she’s begging Dani to keep going now, even if she’s pleading for just a little more--just a little--

As suddenly as it began, Dani is pulling back--hand and mouth both going slack, the horror abrupt and acute. Jamie makes a strangled noise of surprise, even as Dani is leaping from the bed, scrambling for her clothes, trying desperately to scrub the heady taste of blood from her mouth.

“No,” she says aloud--to Jamie, to the Lady, to herself. “No, I won’t--”

Jamie is struggling to sit up, her whole body visibly trembling. “You...”

“Didn’t mean--shouldn’t have--” _Shouldn’t have come. Shouldn’t have stayed. Shouldn’t have risked--_

“S’okay,” Jamie says, sounding slightly dazed--from the sex or the bite, Dani can’t be sure. She presses her fingers to the side of her neck, pulls them away with something like wonder in her eyes. “Ah...that’s blood.”

“I have to go.” _Stupid_ , to think for a second she could win. _Stupid_ , to think for even a second that she could have something of her own--something to give herself to _willingly_ , without a surprise waiting beyond the door.

“Wait.” Jamie seems to be regaining her legs faster than anticipated, stretching off the bed for her shirt. “Hang on, don’t just--”

 _She wants you_ , the Lady murmurs. _She_ liked _it, like you liked it, like everyone likes it if you’d only let yourself go--_

“You don’t,” Dani mutters, dragging her clothes on in shaky haste, “get to have her. You don't get to have _anyone_ but _me_.”

“Who are you talking to?” Jamie is half-buttoned, her throat still stained with that shocking red. She is reaching, Dani realizes, one hand closing lightly around Dani’s wrist. “Stay. Stay with me, talk to me, you don’t have to go.”

That’s the bite talking--or the sex--or simple madness. It’s the _human_ talking, if nothing else, and while Dani is sure Jamie means well--sure she’s very wise in her own way--there is just no way she can wrap her head around what it would mean to jump over the edge of this cliff.

This cliff Dani dragged her toward. Pushed her right up to the edge of. Even knowing damn well the danger, Dani did that much. Can’t blame the Lady for it. Can’t blame the Lady for everything.

“It didn’t hurt,” Jamie says suddenly. She touches her throat again, as if testing to make certain she’s speaking honestly, and nods. “You didn't hurt me.”

 _It doesn’t hurt_ , Dani thinks helplessly. _That’s the problem._ Like it hadn’t hurt the young woman last night, with Dani drinking from her wrist. Like it hadn’t even hurt _Dani_ , with Viola sifting long fingers through her hair, draining away every ounce of sunlight from her future.

It doesn’t hurt in the moment. That is, Dani is sure, the only reason monsters can keep moving through the world. Because possession seems never to hurt, until it is absolute.

Jamie’s hand is still around her wrist. Jamie’s hand, more tempting even than the bloody mark left on her pale throat.

“Let go,” Dani says, and for the first time tonight, pushes gently with her mind. _Third time has to be the charm. Third time has to stick._ “Let me go, Jamie. Forget me.”

“I--” Jamie’s eyes are starting to cloud, though her brow is tightening, and Dani thinks with wonder: _She’s fighting it. She’s fighting it off._ “You shouldn’t be--"

She’s already going. Already running. Coming here tonight, telling her story, allowing herself into Jamie’s bed was a weakness. Unforgivable, perhaps--Dani can’t forget this, and there’s every likelihood Jamie won’t, either. Every likelihood that--despite Dani’s best efforts--Jamie will remember for the rest of her days this strange, baffling woman who kissed her, touched her, drank of her. 

_Left her._

_Can’t stay_ , Dani thinks, pushing through the door, down the stairs, out into the warmth of the early morning air. The sky is still silver-speckled, the world soft and unblemished as she strides away from the pub, the flat, the woman who had so briefly convinced her _joy_ could be enough to banish a beast. 

Jamie’s voice is still ringing in her ears as she sets off toward the village limits. Jamie’s final words, her voice wounded, echoing in her head. 

“You shouldn’t be alone, Dani. Nobody should be without company that long.”

She didn’t say, _Come back._ Didn’t cry, _Don’t go._ Didn’t run after Dani and try to hold her. Only those words, ringing on and on as Dani grits her teeth and strides away from any temptation to admit just how much they hurt.

_You shouldn’t be alone._

_Nobody should be without company._

Dani Clayton thinks, _Not alone. Can never be alone. I have her._

She does not look back at Bly again.

***

Doesn’t look back at England again, either. Or France. Or Europe. Europe was an adventure, once, an unknown land full of language and charm and culture; she’d been all too happy to fall into its embrace, quietly inspecting all the ageless wonder that had seemed so different to her American eyes. It had been a thrill, picking up bits and pieces from people who would never remember giving lessons. It had been a thrill, moving through the world with no eyes on her back. 

Had been.

Now, no matter where she goes, she feels as though it’s only a matter of time. A matter of time before someone else manages what Jamie had--to see through the mask, to peer beyond the fog into the reality of her. And if Jamie had wanted to know her, who’s to say the next surprise won’t have exactly the same desire?

Who’s to say Dani will be strong enough to walk away a second time?

***

She turns the misery into momentum. Out of England, out of Europe, taking a boat back across an ocean she’s not crossed in over two decades. The mere act of coasting over water--even in the safe harbor of a boat which barely cares she’s here at all--pinches at her nerves, the Lady rumbling her usual displeasure. For all her strength, for all the freedom Dani granted that night so long ago, Viola can’t forget the pull of the water. Can’t forget her own purification ritual, the memory of a husband and daughter who had been so _certain_ they were doing right by her at last. 

_We all have our baggage_ , Dani thinks, and tries not to remember a smile pressed like sunshine into her skin. 

America has changed a great deal in her twenty-year absence--and somehow, still, seems exactly the same. The longer her life goes on without daylight, without lines springing up around her eyes and years tacking themselves to her spine, the less Dani thinks of change. She ought to be in her eighties now, bent and spent and ready for the final chapters to unfold. 

Instead, she is thirty. Thirty now, thirty always, not growing or changing or learning--

 _Well. Learning some things._ Like the danger of an invitation. Like the danger of a guard lowered. 

Like the danger of a woman who might well have woken the next morning with Dani’s name still on her lips. 

Doesn’t matter. Nothing she can do about it. With the temptation of Bly in the rearview, with the temptation of walking right back up those stairs long-gone, she can move forward. Wake. Walk. Drink. Push the Lady back where she belongs. 

It is, perhaps, not as sustainable as it once was--but she has gotten so _good_ at the quiet. So good at the dark. So good at shifting her gaze away from mirrors, away from pretty smiles, away from all the little targets painted on this life that can’t fit alongside another’s. 

Quiet. Simple. Lonely. She can do this.

For another three years, she does. The days smear together in sleep; the nights are puzzle pieces clicking one into the next, forming a greater image. She explores what America has become in her absence, making her way through states at random. Kentucky. Ohio. Maine. 

Vermont.

Three years tumble past, there and gone in a blink, and Dani tries not to care. Tries to scrounge back for the young woman who strode without meaning to into a village pub. Tries to scrounge back for the young woman who trusted in her own anonymity to get by. 

She finds her, in the end. More or less. Enough to keep up the routine. Wake. Walk. Drink. Wake. Walk. Drink.

 _This could end_ , the Lady whispers. _There are others, you know, who would be honored to give me what’s left of their soul. Why continue this fight?_

This conversation--pointlessly circular--has been the one steady thing all this time. This conversation, the Lady whispering that it could all be so much easier, that Dani could enjoy the world so much more if only she’d allow Viola the shift from passenger to partner. 

Once, simply letting the Lady in had been enough. Once, she’d been pleased simply to bite, to change, to infect Dani’s world. 

Now, she wants more. More than Dani’s willing to give. 

A gift. A curse. A structure. This much, she can handle. This much is acceptable.

No more.

 _You have enough of me_ , she insists, and the Lady laughs. 

***

Vermont in October is pleasant. In another life, she thinks, she could stay here forever--watching kids and dogs and lovers strolling with no regard for the monsters under the bed. She wishes, almost, that she could see them in daylight. Wishes, almost, that she could turn back the clock and see it all with Danielle’s eyes.

But Danielle is long-dead, and rightly so; Dani sometimes thinks she’d have killed her herself if only she’d known how to do it safely. Time makes an enemy of itself in so many ways--in falling forward, and in its expectation in any given decade. There is freedom now, the likes of which she could never have found as Danielle Clayton.

_There were rules back then._

_Still are._

She shakes her head, weary. Three years, and she’s almost managed to muffle that voice. Almost managed to muffle the memory of those eyes drinking in an impossible story, that smile curving with reckless disregard for what made sense. Three years, and she has almost convinced herself the beast she allowed herself to be for an instant in Jamie’s bed is, at least, shackled.

A fitting punshment for an unacceptable crime. She slipped once. She’ll never slip again.

And why think of it now? Now, pushing up on Halloween, when the nights hold dominion, she is the safest she’s ever been. It will be winter soon, hours and hours of dark falling like silk across her skin. October in Vermont is lovely, and wants nothing from her, and she is--

Coming up on a little shop.

She has been lingering in this small town for longer than perhaps she should-- _falling back on old mistakes_ , the Lady had murmured when one week had turned into three, and still Dani was walking the same blocks. It doesn’t _feel_ like a mistake, somehow, not in the way Bly had. Bly had been tiny and walled-off from the world. Bly had felt as though stepping foot inside its proverbial walls was no different than tethering herself to the very life force of the place.

Vermont--all of America--feels different. Younger. Less like it might at any moment grab hold and drag her down.

 _Human nonsense_ \--but she’s fed the Lady with regularity, with no argument at all, and though the Lady is no closer to swallowing what’s left of Dani, it has brokered a sort of calm between them. Wake. Walk. Feed. Dani giving herself only to the Lady, even if not _all_ of herself. The Lady, growing a little stronger with every night’s feeding.

Sooner or later, Dani knows. Sooner or later, the war will reach a breaking point; she will grow too tired to fight on, and the Lady will strike. Sooner or later.

But until then, her evenings are her own. And she _likes_ it here, likes the people and the colors of the trees as they make their way toward the temporary death of winter. Likes the lines of shops, which she explores with the fog wound tightly around like armor. The eyes of book sellers and furniture salesmen, jewelers and teenage cashiers slide off as quickly as they land, their smiles sweet and docile and uninterested. Dani smiles politely, says hello and goodbye without changing inflection, and by the time she moves on to the next, she’s already a dream.

The story is long, and the story is complicated, and always, the protagonist at its heart will fade. Safer that way, for everyone. Better that way, for all.

She’s already fed the hunger tonight, her first act upon waking; a woman with black hair and kind eyes had smiled at her beneath a streetlamp, and Dani had accepted the moment like a gift. The woman, who touched her face with something like hope, had watched Dani go and--before Dani was even around the corner--wondered after the strange marks on her wrist. Dani’s gentle brush of intent had been enough.

It is always enough. She’s been waiting, for three years, for the power over her own story to falter. For the right to say _I am not here for you_ to fall away. For the whole world to look upon the beast wearing the face of well-mannered beauty and remember how _wrong_ she is to walk among them.

They never do. It’s 1990 now, the world nearly ready for a new era, and Dani feels just as she had in 1980--1960--1940. The world changes. She doesn’t. Fair enough price to pay.

This shop is new.

Or, maybe not _new_. Maybe just something she’s missed. Dani has not put in a great deal of effort to map out the entire town, has not felt the need to draw up exits and escape routes. Soon, she knows. Soon, she’ll have pushed her luck as far as she’s willing to see it go. For now, she is content.

And this shop is lovely. From its elegant sign-- _The Leafling_ printed in gold-on-red--to the array of color in its windows, it is exactly the sort of place she’d have loved in her old life. Beautiful, yes--but there has always been something about a flower shop, something about the boundless vitality held within a stall or set of walls that makes her feel like she’s walked into magic.

Particularly now. The Lady does not care for flowers--some old myths hold harder than others, and the scent of roses are not _deadly_ so much as an nuisance to her. It is one of Dani’s little triumphs, walking into a place like _The Leafling_ and feelng the Lady shrink back to the shadows. Like traveling over water, it is a cross only the Lady bears, never quite touching Dani herself.

 _Have your fun_ , the voice mutters, and Dani knows there will come a time she’ll regret it--years from now, decades down the line, when her defenses fall at last. A time where she will be punished for embracing the soul the Lady has not yet laid perfect claim to. But so what? There will be bigger concerns than paying for the strength of her will in Vermont, when it happens. Might as well do as she pleases while she can.

The little bell above the door chimes. The air is fragrant with petal and bloom and leaf, the small space awash in color. Dani smiles, brushing her fingertips across the nearest plant, the verdant leaves standing out against her skin.

Not the same, maybe, as seeing it in the light--but as near as she ever gets anymore.

“Help you?” a voice asks, a woman bent double behind the counter. “Closin’ up soon, but if you’re looking for something special, we could always--”

The voice stops.

Dani looks up.

Jamie is staring at her with mouth hanging open.

She’s older--not by much, but Dani has grown good at spotting hints of age in others, a sort of jealous acceptance that she will never see the same advancement in her own face. Her hair is still pleasantly mussed, her clothing a little less rumpled; in a white blouse, brown slacks, suspenders, she looks professional. At ease.

Utterly baffled to find Dani staring back.

“You,” she says, her accent as strong as Dani remembers. “ _You_.”

Part of Dani wants to back toward the door. Part of her wants to run forward, touch Jamie’s face, assure herself this is not some wild hallucination. All of her seems to burn, looking into the eyes of a woman who looks as though she hasn’t forgotten a single moment of that June night in ’87.

“How,” Dani says, feeling as dazed as Jamie looks. “How are you here?”

“ _Me_?” Jamie isn’t smiling. She steps around the counter, taking halting steps across the shop. “Paid the fuckin’ lease for the last two months, s’how I’m here. How are you-- _why_ are you--”

Dani doesn’t have an answer. She could be glib, she supposes-- _just traveling, seeing the sights_ \--but it wouldn’t land. Not with Jamie looking at her like a ghost made flesh.

There is a silver chain around her neck, Dani notes, remembering with a hot flash how her fingers had traced its links against a bare chest. A silver chain, an open collar--an old scar.

Jamie is touching the bite now, with the reflexive motion of a woman who does this on a sort of absent autopilot. Just a quick brush of two fingers, her hand falling to her side as she says, “Didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

“You weren’t supposed to,” Dani says. Her mouth feels strangely dry, her head strangely vacant. Jamie is barely three feet away, her steps shrinking to a careful shuffle.

“You left.” Her voice is almost accusing. Dani finds herself matching it.

“You remembered.”

“’ _Course_ I fuckin’--” Jamie seems to catch herself. Takes a deep breath. “Not at first, I didn’t. Going to bed, couldn’t figure out why my clothes were all over the bloody floor. Or why my goddamn neck felt like I’d been--”

Dani closes her eyes. _How? What are the odds?_ As though she, of all people, should be arguing with a universe which seems so dedicated to making her existence more difficult.

“But by morning,” Jamie goes on, “better believe I remembered. Remembered every last fuckin’ detail. Dani.”

“I’m sorry.” It’s not enough. It’ll never be enough. “I never should have--”

“Still fighting?” Jamie asks. She freezes, the apology dying on her lips.

“What?”

“You’re still fighting her,” Jamie says. Not a question this time. She’s close enough to touch. Dani takes a single step back.

“Yes.”

Jamie rubs her neck, as though suddenly realizing the enormity--the insanity--of the situation. “And you just…happened to find your way here. To my shop. Where I live.”

“I didn’t know it was yours.” _If I had, I’d be halfway to New York by now._ She’d run from Europe to keep this from happening again. Had run all the way across the ocean, to force down the searing urge to find her way back to that little pub in Bly. Hadn’t trusted herself not to linger near Jamie’s smile, Jamie’s hands, Jamie’s unbearably wonderful way of listening like every word matters.

 _Brazil might be nice this time of year_ , she thinks wildly. _I could go. Right now. I could--_

Jamie is shaking her head. “Nothing for it, then.”

“What does that--” But Jamie is striding past her. Long, easy steps carry her around Dani to the door, where Dani watches her poke her head out into the autumn air. Look around. Lean back inside again, the door pulling shut behind her.

“You eat yet?”

Dani frowns. A joke? It doesn’t sound like a joke. Jamie doesn’t sound like she’s laughing, or nervous, or anything Dani can pin down. Jamie is simply framing a question, as if chatting with an old friend.

Except her hand is rising again to that scar. Pressing it like a talisman. Her lips twitch once, and Dani’s heart gives a single pronounced thud.

“Yeah. I did.”

“Good,” Jamie says. “Then we have time to talk. Without, ah--” She gestures at Dani, at her own neck, shrugs as though embarrassed to have brought it up. “Y’know. Again.”

Dani winces, shaking her head. “I don’t think that’s a very good--”

“Look,” Jamie says patiently. “You were…under my skin before I could make sense of it. And then you were gone. And you thought I’d just forget you, what, because you _wanted_ me to?”

“I wanted it to be easy--”

“Well, it wasn’t.” She doesn’t sound angry. She sounds, if anything, frustrated. “I spent…months looking around every bloody corner, hoping I’d run into you. I looked for you in the stupidest places. You can’t just expect someone to forget, Dani.”

 _I can_ , Dani thinks helplessly. _They always do._

But Jamie is looking at her. The exact same way she had in that flat three years ago, she is looking, and she is almost smiling, and the pull--the hunger--the desire to take her hand and accept a little of that shocking joy again is…

“And now,” Jamie says—her voice soft and calm and urgent all at once, “you’re here. Other side of the globe. Years later. In my shop. I don’t believe in fate, Dani, but that’s…I don’t know what that is.”

“Me either,” Dani says honestly. _Fate._ She doesn’t believe in it, either, not exactly—but there had also been a time where she hadn’t believed in monsters, in creatures that could share her soul, in immortality. The world beneath the world is deep, and dark, and its gravity can be so much stronger than the mind can dream.

“You’re still lonely?”

Jamie’s voice ticks up at the end, but they both know it isn’t a question. Both know that, for whatever reason, Jamie can see her in ways no one else has ever bothered to try. At least where this one painful detail is concerned.

Dani, not trusting herself, nods once. Jamie gives a nod of her own.

“Right. Like I said. We have time to talk.” She pauses, her hand lingering on the door. “If you want. If you…”

 _Don’t want to run again_ , she doesn’t say.

 _Don’t want to pretend you never thought of staying_ , she doesn’t say.

“It’s dangerous,” Dani says, a final argument falling away even as the words leave her mouth. Jamie almost smiles.

“Always is.”

Dani, terrified in ways that have nothing to do with the Lady, hungry in ways that have nothing to do with the beast, can find nothing else to say. No other reason not to accept. That Jamie had come into her world once should never have been possible. For Jamie to come in _again_?

Not fate, maybe. But here all the same. Here, and offering Dani what she has so badly craved since staring into that lake all those years ago.

A choice.

She licks her lips. Nods. Hears her own voice, trembling at the edges, say, “Okay.”

“Okay,” Jamie agrees. “Here goes.”

She flips the lock into place. Reaches out. Takes Dani’s hand.

Dani, unable to resist, squeezes back.


End file.
